Colin Kaepernick Is The American Dream
In sitting during the national anthem, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback is standing for a whole lot of things.
“Yes. I’ll continue to sit. I’m going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed.”
In a topsy-turvy society like ours, where down often is presented as up, wrong is packaged as right, state-excused-guilt masquerades as exoneration, and conformity is advertised as the ultimate freedom, it’s fitting Colin Kaepernick made the boldest stand of any male athlete in recent memory … by sitting.
Female athletes already have taken bold, unequivocal stances. The WNBA players who pushed back against police criticism and league fines were impressive not only in their persistence, but also in how unified they were, even across racial boundaries. Though they certainly have less leverage — and therefore more to lose — those women were uncompromising, while their male counterparts have consistently hemmed and hawed, doing an awkward and complicated dance in step with their sponsors and fans. The dignity of the black athlete still often is at odds with the dignity of a significant percentage of his/her audience; to affirm one can mean jeopardizing the other.
Now, a high-profile male in the nation’s most popular sport is taking a clear position, consequences be damned. So, Colin Kaepernick sits for his ideals, and for the courage and determination of Natasha Cloud, Tina Charles, Tamika Catchings, Swin Cash, Breanna Stewart, et al.
The reactions to Kaepernick’s decision on social media were immediate, strong, and split sharply along political and racial lines. They ran the gamut from sympathetic and supportive …
to self-parodic …
to obtuse …
to even paternalistic.
Some sought to convince Kaepernick that racism in America is a non-issue by calling him different kinds of n*gger. Given the strategic, thematic intertwining of professional football, military, and patriotism, Kaepernick’s thoughts about injustice, and his willingness to sacrifice his career and endorsements for personal convictions were misconstrued by many as tantamount to treason.
This is not a nation that cares much about its veterans or its football icons beyond invoking them either when they are neutered by a retrofitted narrative, or death, so I wasn’t surprised to see so many people posit Pat Tillman as a foil to Kaepernick, though the sacrifices Tillman made for his country were rewarded by an undignified demise at the hands of American troops, and a reprehensible cover-up by military leaders. Colin Kaepernick sits for Pat Tillman and his family, too.
Colin Kaepernick also sits for the concepts of community and societal responsibility, both of which are lost on the very people who disingenuously demand Kaepernick respect the interconnectedness of our United States by demonstrating a reflexive fealty to the flag while simultaneously asking how much money he has given to “his” community to shame him out of expressing empathy. And by Kaepernick’s “community,” they don’t mean the Milwaukee suburbs of his early life, the California of his young adult life, or anything related to home or his larger American community; they mean to lean on the old and faulty crutches of black pathology. They mean to say blacks are not allowed to protest injustice, because in their minds, the cyclical poverty and violence spawned by white exploitation, discrimination, and racism don’t exist. It’s an illogical rebuke born of an ahistorical perspective and outright contempt, certainly not from a sense that “together, we are stronger.”
Colin Kaepernick sits because he is a team player; he understands his guaranteed millions don’t exempt him from caring about the psychic health of his country and the plight of the underclass. This is a principled and noble stand, not an arrogant one. The nasty reactions prove his freedom and societal value are contingent on him playing his expected part in the bread and circus of professional football. Once he stepped outside of his role as spectacle, the illusion of his freedom was revealed and replaced by calls for censorship. His critical, independent thought became an affront, rather than a virtue.
Instead of a hardworking, ultra-talented success story, Kaepernick has been cast as an ungrateful charity case who should be happy someone pays him a salary. In America, a high-paying job is a right for some, but a “privilege” to many others — rhetoric naked in its racism. The expected exchange for success should not be silence and acquiescence. Colin Kaepernick sits for his and our right to have a voice.
Colin Kaepernick sits for the American Dream. Colin Kaepernick is the American Dream. Or, at least, he’s what we like to pretend it is.
Born into poverty, a bi-racial baby adopted and raised by two white parents, Kaepernick is the sort of prototypical Omni-American who would have provoked a knowing grin from Albert Murray. Murray recognized America for the composite culture it always has been, as he famously wrote, “Any fool can see that white people are not really white, and that black people are not black.”
Kaepernick has said himself he often felt he was neither really white nor really black as a child. He felt, instead, he was “who I needed to be.” He hoped to be evaluated on the dignity with which he carried himself, and the way he treated others. This philosophy was in step with his religious beliefs — the sort of beliefs flag-wavers revere outwardly, but continually betray both in action and inaction.
Given his background, his life philosophies, his excellence across several sports (he was drafted in both professional baseball and football), his 4.5 GPA in high school, and the fact he prophesied his own ascendance, Kaepernick’s story is fodder for folklore, a Hollywood fantasy come to life. He represents the very virtues and fantasies our society claims to prize. So why, even before he sat during the National Anthem, had this exceptional person received so much condescension and scorn, instead of a biopic?
Kaepernick sits because critical discussion and dissent must never be squashed under the foot of the empty nationalism that emerges in a culture of permanent war. When we are at war abroad, at war with drugs, at war with conservatives and liberals, at war with blacks, Mexicans and Muslims, at war with women, we are at war with decency. We are at war with ourselves.
As I watched a 49er fan burning Kaepernick’s jersey, I remembered one of my college professors lamenting the murder of a young classmate who’d put herself in a situation that seemed unthinkable. What she said then has always stayed with me, haunted me: “In a society that despises intelligence and justice, our brightest lights are prone to self-immolation.” Kaepernick sits because he is one of our brightest lights, and he empathizes with that slow, gradually intensifying, inward burning so many of us — black and brown and white, male and female, oppressed and conscientious — understand well.
Lately, the mood of this country has seemed desultory at best, and inhumane at worst. It is difficult to talk about in public, and easier to just go about our collective business. But either we rise to the challenge of having these difficult, painful conversations, or we sink beneath layers of avoidance, rationalizations, and ethical compromise. Colin Kaepernick sits because this is the world we have, and like his jersey, it is burning before our eyes. It’s up to us, as James Baldwin once implored, to make it over.
